Merchandise Demand Planner (Open to Remote)

$72,000 - $90,000/Yr

Bob's Discount Furniture - Manchester, CT

Full-time - Mid Level

Remote - Manchester, CT

101-250 employees

Furniture, Home Furnishings, Electronics, and Appliance Retailers

About the position

The Merchandise Demand Planner will play a crucial role in developing demand plans and providing strategic direction for merchandise buys within Bob's Omni Channel business model. This position requires a strong analytical background and the ability to collaborate across various departments to drive the strategy for assortment planning, product distortions, and pricing modeling. The ideal candidate will act as a trusted advisor to the Merchandising team, helping to translate strategic direction into actionable plans and ensuring alignment with financial goals.

Responsibilities

• Develop pre-launch top-down/bottom-up level plans for sales, inventory, markdowns, and margin in partnership with the Merchants.
• Conduct monthly reforecast of category unit plans/dollar/cost plans, focusing on future opportunities and minimizing sales/inventory risks.
• Communicate over/under bought situations and provide recommendations for resolution.
• Initiate analysis of business trends, including category performance, regional/store, channel, and SKU performance selling.
• Communicate with multiple departments on merchandise sales and margin trends to identify selling behavioral changes.
• Recommend test strategies based on current category performance and initiate analysis.
• Collaborate with merchandising to develop and communicate comprehensive strategy that aligns with future financial product opportunities.
• Incorporate onboarding of new products, retirement of old products, customer-specific inventory requirements, and promotions into the demand planning process.
• Participate in internal and external cross-functional meetings, presenting product-level financials and identifying risks and opportunities.
• Develop a comprehensive Open to Buy plan, considering various supply sources servicing different customer interests.
• Develop assortment plans that tie back to monthly open to buy targets and overall financial sales goals.
• Analyze existing systems and create new workflows and processes with department heads.
• Become a subject matter expert within Demand Planning in the implementation and integration of new planning software tools.
• Design recurring and ad hoc reporting and analysis on key business metrics and present findings in a clear and actionable form.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, or a related field preferred.
• Minimum 4 years of experience in a planning function, preferably in Retail.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; highly proficient with MS Excel and merchandise planning systems.
• Ability to learn new systems quickly and leverage systems and information to influence others.
• Ability to work with data from multiple sources and interpret it to provide actionable conclusions.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to work across the organization.
• Strong communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to work in a team environment.

Nice-to-haves

• Forecasting/planning experience in the retail industry.
• Experience with tools such as Logility, Power BI, ERP solutions, and Integrated Supply Chain planning solutions.

Benefits

• Nationally provided Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance
• Paid Vacation, Personal Days, Sick Days, Holidays, work anniversary and Birthday
• 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan with a Generous Company match
• Pet Insurance
• Employer-paid basic Life Insurance with the option to add Voluntary Life Insurance
• Financial Planning, Voluntary Legal Benefits and Wellness Plans
• Generous Employee Discount starting on the first day